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UChicago Presents | Performance Hall | Logan Center
October 18, 2015, 3:00 PM
Pacifica Quartet with Marc-André Hamelin, piano
Simin Ganatra, violin
Sibbi Bernhardsson, violin
Masumi Per Rostad, viola
Brandon Vamos, cello
The Pacifica Quartet is the Don Michael Randel Ensemble-in-Residence with the University of Chicago
2 PM pre-concert lecture with Dan Wang
LIGETI
String Quartet No. 1, Metamorphoses nocturnes
DEBUSSY
Images, Book I
Reflets dans l’eau
Hommage à Rameau
Mouvement
DEBUSSY
Préludes, Book II (selections)
No. 4 Les fées sont d'exquises danseuses: Rapide et léger
No. 7 La terrasse des audiences du clair de lune: Lent
No. 11 Les tierces alternées: Modérément animé
No. 12 Feux d'artifice: Modérément animé
Intermission
DVOŘÁK
Piano Quintet, No. 2 in A Major, Op. 81
Allegro ma non tanto
Dumka: Andante con moto
Scherzo-Furiant: Molto vivace
Allegro
PROGRAM NOTES
String Quartet No. 1, Metamorphoses nocturnes
GYÖRGY LIGETI
Born May 28, 1923, Târnăveni,, Romania
Died June 12, 2006, Vienna, Austria
Performance Time
approximately 22 minutes
Premiere
In the Wiener Musikverein on May 9, 1958 by the Ramor Quartet
Györgi Ligeti survived not only the Holocaust but also the early years of oppressive Stalinist
Hungary, from which he fled in to Austria 1956. His unique combination of technical innovation and humor
sets him apart from other 20th century modernists. Many of his compositions involve complex masses of
sound and shifting tone colors and use unconventional sounds as well as traditional instruments, such as
in his poème symphonique (1962) for ten musicians operating 100 metronomes. A wide audience
became familiar with music from Ligeti’s Requiem when it was used by director Stanley Kubrick in the film
2001: A Space Odyssey, apparently without the knowledge of the composer.
His two string quartets are among his most accessible works. String Quartet No. 1 is written as
one movement with seventeen separate sections, each lasting only a minute or two. The composer wrote:
“The first word of the sub-title refers to the form. It is a kind of variation form, only there is no specific
‘theme’ that is then varied. It is, rather, that one and the same musical concept appears in constantly new
forms - that is why ‘metamorphoses’ is more appropriate than ‘variations’. The quartet can be considered
as having just one movement or also as a sequence of many short movements that melt into one another
without pause or which abruptly cut one another off. The basic concept, which is always present in the
intervals but which is in a state of constant transformation, consists of two major seconds that succeed
each other transposed by a semitone. In this First String Quartet there are certainly some characteristics
of my later music, but the writing is totally different, ‘old-fashioned’; there are still distinct melodic,
rhythmic and harmonic patterns and bar structure. It is not tonal music, but it is not radically atonal, either.
The piece still belongs firmly to the Bartók tradition (remember my situation as a composer in Hungary at
the beginning of the fifties), yet despite the Bartók-like tone (especially in the rhythm) and despite some
touches of Stravinsky and Alban Berg, I trust that the First String Quartet is still personal work.”
Ligeti wrote String Quartet No. 1 in 1953-54 when he had no hope that it would ever be
performed. Bartok’s third and fourth string quartets, which Ligeti acknowledged as major influences, were
also banned in Hungary at the time.
--Program note by Robert Strong © 2015
Images, Book I
CLAUDE DEBUSSY
b. August 22, 1862, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France
d. March 25, 1918, Paris, France
Performance Time: approximately 17 minutes
Premiere: Hommage à Rameau was premiered on December 14, 1905 by Maurice Dumenil; Reflets
dans l’eau and Mouvement were first performed in the following year by Ricardo Viñes.
In the early years of this century, Debussy’s piano music, already a miracle of subtlety and tone color,
took on a new depth and sophistication. It may be possible to find reasons for this in the composer’s life. After
years of struggle, Debussy–now in his early forties–had two significant successes: the opera Pelléas et Mélisande
was produced in 1902, and La Mer followed three years later. With these achievements behind him–and with a
new sense of orchestral sonority derived from composing the opera and La Mer–Debussy returned to composing
for piano. He produced the first book of Images in 1905, the second in 1907.
Audiences should both take the title Images seriously and they should ignore it. It is true that some of
these six individual pieces have visual titles and seem at first to proceed from the images they suggest. Yet
Debussy’s intention here is much more subtle than mere tone-painting. He aims not for literal depiction of the title
but for a refined projection of mood, a combination of title, rhythm, and sonority to create an evocative soundworld all its own. Debussy was quite proud of his achievement in this music. When he sent the first set off to his
publisher, he wrote: “With no false vanity, I believe that these three pieces are a success and that they will take
their place in the literature of the piano, on the left hand of Schumann, or the right hand of Chopin, as you like it.”
Few would argue with that claim.
The first book consists of three quite different pieces. Some of Debussy’s finest works were inspired by
water, and the first of this set–“Reflections in the Water”–is one of them. The repetition and growing complexity of
the chordal melody from the beginning has inevitably been compared to dropping stones into the surface of water
and watching the patterns of ripples interweave. The music rises to a shimmering climax and fades into silence
on fragments of sound.
At the same time he was writing Images, Debussy was also editing an edition of the opera Les Fêtes de
Polymnie by eighteenth-century French composer Jean-Philippe Rameau, and he wrote this movement quite
literally as homage to the older composer. Debussy does not quote Rameau but instead writes in a baroque
form, the sarabande, as a way of honoring a master whom he revered. A sarabande is an old dance (originally
from the sixteenth century), and this one–in G-sharp minor–dances gravely. The abstractly-titled Mouvement is
characterized by great rhythmic energy (Debussy marks it Animé); some have heard pre-echoes here of the sort
of ostinato-based piano music Stravinsky and Bartók would write a generation later.
Préludes Book II (selections)
CLAUDE DEBUSSY
b. August 22, 1862, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France
d. March 25, 1918, Paris, France
Performance Time: approximately 15 minutes
Premiere: The first performance of the entire second book was in 1913 by Walter Morse Rummel in
London. Earlier, groups of three or four préludes were preformed by Ricardo Viñes, Norah Drewett and
Debussy himself.
Debussy composed his two books of piano preludes relatively late in life. The first appeared in 1910, and
he composed the second book of twelve preludes over the next several years while he was completing one of his
most subtle orchestral scores, the ballet Jeux. Book II was published in Paris on April 19, 1913, just six weeks
before Stravinsky’s Le sacre du printemps stood that city on its head.
Though he has been inescapably tagged an “impressionist,” Debussy disliked that term. He would have
argued that he was not trying to present a physical impression of something but instead trying to create in sound
the character of his subject. So little was he concerned to convey a physical impression that he placed the
evocative title of each prelude at its end rather than beginning–he did not wish to have an audience (or performer)
fit the music into a preconceived mental set but rather wanted the music heard for itself first, identified with an
idea or image later. In fact, some have gone so far as to say that perhaps Debussy wanted the music to suggest
the title.
This recital offers four of the preludes from Book. II. Les fées sont d’exquises danseuses (Fairies Are
Exquisite Dancers) takes its title–and inspiration–from one of Arthur Rackham’s illustrations for Sir James Barrie’s
Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens. The picture shows a tiny fairy dancing upon a strand of web, accompanied by
two grotesque insects playing oboe and cello. The music is in 3/8 time, and from time to time one catches faint
fragments of some ethereal and distant waltz. La terrasse des audiences du clair de lune (The Balcony Where
Moonlight Holds Court) was inspired by tales of India; the last of the preludes to be composed, it features chords
at the extreme ends of the keyboard. Les tierces alternées (Alternating Thirds) is the only prelude without an
evocative title–it is literally a succession of thirds from both hands, sometimes at a slow tempo, sometimes in a
blistering rush. The final prelude–Feux d’artifice (Fireworks)–brings a festival of fireworks, and the occasion
becomes clear at the end: a bit of “La Marseillaise” sneaks in to remind us that these fireworks celebrate July 14–
Bastille Day.
- Program note by Eric Bromberger
Piano Quintet No. 2 in A Major, Op. 81
ANTONÍN DVOŘÁK
b. September 8, 1841, Nelahozeves, Austrian Empire (Bohemia)
d. May 1, 1904, Prague, Austrian Empire
Performance Time: approximately 42 minutes
Premiere: Composed between August 18 and October 8 of 1887, premiered in Prague on January 6,
1888.
Dvořák’s Piano Quintet in A major, Op. 81 was published in 1887, a time of great personal happiness for
the composer. By then he was highly regarded throughout Europe and popular in many musical genres.
Johannes Brahms and other musical luminaries were his enthusiastic supporters. Happily married, he
had sufficient income for a small summer-house in the country where he could enjoy the beauties of
nature and raise pigeons.
The Op. 81 quintet was created following an attempt to revise an early composition, the Piano
Quintet, Op. 5, written in 1872 when he was still under the spell of Liszt and Wagner. Now the heir to
Smetana’s musical expression of Czech nationalism, Dvořák found he could not successfully revise Op.
5. He set it aside to compose the Op. 81 Piano Quintet, an entirely new work.
Dvořák used the melodic and harmonic patterns of Slavonic folk music to create melodies of
great charm and beauty in all four movements of the Op. 81 quintet. The first movement is built around
two darkly colored themes, the first a poignant song in the cello and the second a more rhythmic melody
in the viola. Both are woven together in a series of elaborate transformations.
The second movement is marked “Dumka,” a Slavic folk ballad form that begins with melancholy
meditation before changing suddenly to exuberance. Dvořák unfolds an arch-form A-B-A-C-A-B-A design,
with pensive A sections separated by brighter interludes. B sections playfully oppose triplets against
eighth notes, while the giddy central C section dances to a rhythmic restatement of the movement’s
delicate opening bars in the piano.
Dvořák adds “Furiant” to the Scherzo’s title to indicate that it is freely based on a fast Bohemian
dance in triple time with shifting accents. The musical mood swings from the buoyant scherzo to the
nostalgic trio’s slow recollection of the scherzo’s melody, then back again to the scherzo’s gaiety.
The imposing Finale, a full sonata-form movement, opens with a rhythmic introduction and a highspirited little dance in the violin echoed by the piano. These musical elements are developed skillfully,
including a driving fugal section, with the quintet’s characteristic alternation of good humor and
seriousness. A stately chorale in the coda gives way to the energetic conclusion.
--Program note by Robert Strong © 2015